The online crowd funding website, power2give, has provided the Louisville Youth Orchestra with a mechanism to give back to the community-at-large in a very “powerful” way.
The LYO’s first p2g project is one of my favorites. “Keep the Pig on the Road” allowed our youngest orchestra performers to continue their annual tour at several nursing homes in the area. The residents at the homes look forward to these performances each year and also to sitting side by side with our “littlest musicians” at lunch. We provide individual solos to residents unable to leave their rooms and bring the house down with some square-dancing tunes.
We cross the generational divide with our elementary school members playing for our treasured senior citizens. Our members learn first-hand how these concerts can provide a needed social activity for many elderly citizens and also how music can draw out individual seniors who have difficulty connecting with others. Now that the word is out about this annual tour, we receive calls from retirement and nursing homes far and wide about coming to their location. Without p2g this tour would have been in economic jeopardy. With p2g we are able to continue to offer music to 200+ seniors who would otherwise probably never see or hear an orchestra. And I’ll bet you are wondering about the name of project. The “pig” travels with our Serenade Orchestra on these tours.
The “pig” is a ceramic creation about double the size of a football. The “pig” was presented to our Serenade Orchestra conductor about 20 years ago at one of these retirement home concerts. A grateful, wheelchair-bound senior who looked forward to this event every year had been working on it in a ceramic class in preparation for the next time we came to her place of residence. The “pig” is still with us and will be “on the road” for this extraordinary event as long as we can offer it to our senior community.
Melody Welsh-Buchholz
Executive Director, Louisville Youth Orchestra
